Website Help/Advice

Hey again..ok, another question.

I created my website on Google Sites, as it was free, and had everything I needed to do it solo. However, the name is crazy long and clumsy for remembering. So where and what do you all do for a 'front page' site or your actual site. Are there any 'fairly reasonable' sites with a nice short domain and not too much money per year? All I need now is a 'www.whatevernameIwant.com' type site, and I can use it as a redirect to my actual site.

Any suggestions?

I have a friend that is supposedly getting me set up on his site, but it's been giving him a hard time and it's been over two weeks...and I really need my business cards finished before my upcoming events for Halloween!

Thanks for any other ideas.

Hiya,

I don't know how far you have gone into designing your site, but I will tell you who I use and why. I used Yahoo. For $12 per month it includes the domain name, a site builder program, hosting and email.

I know there is cheaper out there, but I couldn't find another that was so seamless. The website builder they have is great. It is like laying out something in MS WORD. I am not technically inclined and managed to get through it.

They have tons of templates or you can design you own graphics and upload them.

I am sure they also have a way of redirecting your site, but I don't know how that would work when you go to update it. It is worth checking out, plust their technical support was pretty good.

Good Luck!
-Metina

Metina, are you using Yahoo Geocities? Or is it another Yahoo website builder? I use Geocities' free site builder and LOVE it. I'd like to switch to their paid site, but I couldn't find out whether they use PageBuilder, which is why I love Geocities so much.

Heather, my site (www.facesalive.com) is a free site with Yahoo Geocities, and I really like it. The original address is still very long, so I purchased my own domain name, and use it as a "cloak" for my website. This is what I would suggest for you. You can buy your domain for $9.95 at GoDaddy.com, and then have it forwarding people to your free site.

Oh yes...I'm just looking for a 'cheap' site to use as a cloak.

I actually loved the Google sites (very very easy to use) and the gmail is free too...they just make you take on a horribly long name for it.

So I really just need a 'pretty name' website that is going to redirect traffic.

I will look up godaddy.com

Definitely purchase your own domain name. See if www. catsmeow .com or similar is available, and if so, snap it up! For $9.95 a year, it's a great investment, and you will always have it even if you decide to host your site elsewhere.

I use Yahoo Small Business (same as Metina) I've had my site for 3 years 9 months now!! Started at $8.95 a month but is going up to $11.95 in October as they are upgrading things. When I signed up they also registered my domain name so that is part of the cost.

Their PageBuilder program is easy to use - there are templates or you can use html etc. it all depends on your skills. There are lots of options and add-ons too.

I highly recommend it. No software required and you edit your site on-line so everything is live as you save it!

It is very easy to use, but....they just updated and now it had bugs! Just with any update. Yes they templates are SO easy to use. Yahoo has an option to transfer what you have and I just thing all the templates they have are so professional.

But......if it ain't broke, don't fix it. But, YES, get your own domain name! It is a must.

Metina wrote: Yahoo has an option to transfer what you have and I just thing all the templates they have are so professional.

So, if I had a site with Geocities for free, and signed up for Yahoo's paid plan, I could transfer my existing site over to the ad-free site without starting over? Because that's exactly what I am wanting to do. (I do NOT want to start over, or have to learn a new web design software.) Do you have statistics on how many hits you are getting, etc?

whoo hoo! I was able to get www.CatsMeowInfo.com !! It's 9.95 a year (i'm paying for two years in advance). It comes with a bunch of free stuff too.

I still like the google site, as it's free and I have everything I need...but jic, now I have a back up site, and a really short and memorable 'cover page' to redirect my traffic. I can always upgrade the GoDaddy site to include the gee gaws if needed!

Now to go mess around and get it working!!


Thank you ladies!!

Edit: It's up and running. It's just a 'park page', that redirects folks to click the 'real' link. But this will be much easier to remember!!

Thanks again!!

Congratulations! Can't wait to see it!

Gosh! I'm so glad I came across this discussion. I just registered my name MissKittyKreations on Go Daddy! But now I have to re-read everyone's comments and decide how to get a website up and running!

So now, do I have to go to Yahoo to get a site and pay for that and have my GoDaddy domain name linked to it? I am so confused now.

Kitty needs food and drinky.

Yahoo will help! I'm sure there are FAQs that cover that!

Yahoo is pretty helpful and if you are willing to dig, you can find the answer. I am sure if you have a Yahoo product, you should be able to transfer ok, but I wouldn't know for sure. But they want your money and I am sure they will do what they can to get it.

Yahoo has an 800 and the wait can be a bit long, but the help is great.

As to statistics, I put a counter on the site, but honestly, I need help promoting my site and all that meta tag stuff. I haven't a clue and don't know where to start. Any thoughts?

I don't know about Yahoo, but Geocities has a statistics page that will tell you all sorts of things - who is visiting the site, when, what pages they view, even what system they are using. It may be different for paid sites, but I can't imagine that they wouldn't offer something similar or even better. Here's the page for Geocities:

http://geocities.yahoo.com/stats

I am sure they do, but honestly between being mom, producing this site, my business site, marketing and running a business blah, blah, blah, blah and a 4 month old puppy that everyone wanted and I am left to potty train, I just can't take advantage of all that.

But, now that I know it is there.....I HAVE to. I also have to figure out how to get my site up in searches.

This is how we can all lean on each other for.

So GLAD you are all here!

-Metina

Hi all

I can see simply by reading the comments here that there are a LOT of people who need help ..... desperately!

Some admit that they know nothing and have a problem ... and that's good ... at least you know that you do not know. But what concerns me more (on your bahalf) is the flawed advice that's given. There are some things that will be personal opinion, taste and so on .. but others that are simply laws ... the way it is ... no choices just plain facts.

So ... let me make you all an offer of help. I am not a website designer. I do design my own sites but do not want your business doing that. On the contrary, I'll tell you for nothing how you should be doing this yourself. Also WHY you should take control and do this yourself. If you can use email, Word, cut'n'paste ... there is no reason why you cannot!

But you do need to know what to do. Where to do it. Why you must do it. How to do it. And I can tell you.

And, most importantly, how to do it in a way that's cheap (even free) and also how to get your site high in the Search Engines, above your competitors so that searchers find you, and visit.

I just visited a couple iof sites by members who posted here ..... and it's really obvious why they do not get high ranking in the search results. They are just not doing a few simple things ..... and these are crucial!

So IF you need help from an entertainer who knows about web hosting, web design, branding, positioning, sales and marketing ...... this is my area of expertise.

Any questions?

John

Hiya,

Yes. Please share with us how we can get our websites higher in the rankings. Would you please post the directions here as we are all eagerly awaiting.

Thanks for the offer!

Also, when is the free memberships going to start from your initial offering? That was some time ago and I have yet to hear.

ok, so after reading your posts.. I found godaddy.com and signed up my domain name and a hosting package because geocities is going away and not accepting new accounts... I am wondering now... how do I figure out the content I really "should" have on my site... without "stealing" it from others.. of course there will be similar info on our sites, but this is sooooo brand new, and besides some of my photos, and my own contact info, I am kind of at a loss for what to add.

Hi

I haven't been here for a while ... so thanks for your questions.

I recommend GoDaddy for domain registration - but personally NOT for Hosting. What made you buy space from them and what package did you purchase? Are you sharing space on there?

In fact - what do you need? There are some very very cheap packages about now that allow several domains on the one package as well as subdomains. I always look for hosting (either Linux or Windows based) that has a C-Panel, and Fantastico and MYSQL database and the ability to host streaming media files. Otherwise most other stuff is a waste of money.

CONTENT
THis is entirely dictated by what you do and what is the purpose of the site. Sites can be many things but the best sites only do one thing .... so that visitors are clear what it's for and what action to take.

Let me know and I can make more comments.

Certaily don't "steal" anything from any other site. Apart from it being illegal ... you may well get shut down for duplicate content. GoDaddy are hot at closing sites down without notice!

What do you mean by "similar info"? Similar to what?

Do you have an old site I could see? Or any other content / pages online?

Look forward to your rsponse so I can answer more fully over time.

John Gordon
The Infotainer

The Infotainer wrote:

What made you buy space from them and what package did you purchase? Are you sharing space on there?

In fact - what do you need?

What do you mean by "similar info"? Similar to what?

Do you have an old site I could see? Or any other content / pages online?

Look forward to your rsponse so I can answer more fully over time.

John Gordon
The Infotainer

thanks for the reply John,
what made me buy the package was that the day after I bought the domain name, a sales guy from godaddy called me and he asked if I had website, yada yada yada...
I looked up geocities and don't know anything about html, so he said that the budget level of "website tonight" would be a breeze for me to use. It came with 5 pages and many templates to use. At any rate, I may have been taken for a fool, but could any of the cheap or free sites be used to put additional photo pages as I get more examples?

by similar info, I meant that as face painters, generally there is the
"we do parties and grand openings etc." part... and stuff like "I charge this much"

wondering what is really good to put here and where to find it...
should I put safety info in there and should I put spot to tell them which paints I use.

I have seriously never made a site, and besides doing little cheek art designs for the last 4 or 5 years, I just started my "career" last month.
my ex-employers hired me to face paint for the event I used to paint at when I worked for them. And now I have started my first full face, half face and art designs.
last month was when I did my very first ones.

I just got a gig by posting my pics from fourth of july on my facebook site and someone I used to work with hired me to paint for her son's birthday in two weeks...

I want to have a site that will be found and also get me jobs... I don't just want to show off my simple pics of kids I am painting...

my site that I just started today is not awesome but it is just so that if someone looks my site up, something will be there....

it's pixie-doodle.com

as I practice more on my kids and get a few gigs, I will want to add more pics and I know there are other "cool" apps that could be good but I have no idea what it is missing...

and I feel that I may easily find myself going to sites that give free website apps and I may just add silly, random, unnecessary stuff and get it all "cluttered"

thanks for your help!
antonia

Hi Antonia

Thanks for the response. I've just been to look at your site (and your MySpace and Twitter presence too!) ... and I have to say you are doing great. WAY better than the majority of beginners. Really!

There are a LOT of things you do need to pay attention to (ie change) though .... especially in view of the fact that you do wish to be found on serach engines and get more work and income.

For now, I'd stay with the hosting you have and see how it goes.

On other sites you can have tons and tons of pages, photos and anything you like. But let me help you get the absolute BEST from the sapce you have. Can I make some more comments and ask some more questions? I'll need to so that I can give proper help and not irrelevant advice.

Can you tell me about ythe space you have? You say you can have 5 pages? Is the size of these pages restricted? Or can you have, say, 100 photos on one? I wondered why you asked about pace for more pix?s

I think you will need to have some free space in addition to this ... but more about that soon.

To be found ... Gogle etc need to know who you are, where you are and be able to read all about you. Then 'rank' you compared with others. Right now they wouldn't find you. More also next time. But for now, can you change the Title of the page? This is done in the code ... your Page is currently called Home Page ...which is really bad. It's to be found in the code, right at the top: but there is probably a pop up that appears where you enter the 'Title' in a form.

Your Gallery page is called "Page 2" .... nobody will be searching for that term and this is one of the two important things to get right. Let me know if you can find where to change this ... if not, GoDaddy will help you where it is.

Tons more to say but going to keep it simple.. so will end here.

John Gordon
The Infotainer

PS Do NOT go and put clutter stuff on your site. It will detract! There are a couple of Apps that are useful, but more later.

Hello John...
yes.. i welcome all questions and comments. thank you for taking the time to check it out and help...

Here are the details about the package I bought.

50mb disk space
1 GB bandwidth
1 email account
50 email forwards (not sure what this means)
free $25 microsoft adcenter credit
free $50 Facebook Ad credit
free google webmaster tools

I got one free email address for the domain name, so I need to figure out what to name this other email address or if I even need it and then figure out what to do with my credits.

I am now getting ready to practice more faces and have a party to do on the 25th and as I get more pics, I am going to want to post them.

thanks again for the input!
antonia

Don't know if anyone's still watching this, but I actually just built my rebranded website at weebly.com. I've used it for several things now (my father's band's website, my wedding bio), and it's INCREDIBLY easy to use if you're not as familiar with coding as you would like to be -- I know enough to change small things, but there's no way I'd be able to build from scratch. I highly recommend them for the non-techies among us who don't have the spare funds to spend on hiring a professional site designer.

You can build your website for free there using their templates, or completely design your own if you're a techie, and you can either keep it a free site by keeping ".weebly" in your address (I don't recommend this), or you can purchase a hosting package through them as well and purchase a domain name. I chose the latter.

Once the website was up and running, I went ahead and set up a FaceBook page (though I need to start pimping it out to get more fans ) and signed up for google local business - so now my business comes up in that first list of business when you type in "face painting NYC" or "face painting Manhattan" into google.

Not really a fan of Twitter (I was sorely tempted to join when Iranian twittering was going full force, and if even that couldn't convince me, I doubt face painting will), and MySpace layouts hurt my brain. I had one for my pre-branded company, but it didn't seem to be doing me much good, so I don't think I'll be setting up a new page.

I've also submitted my site to google in hopes that they'll include it in the list the next time they do a webcrawl, and I'm working on SEO (search engine optimization) for the site a bit at a time.

John, if you have any suggestions for me, I'd be glad to hear them.

Hey Antonia

Thanks for the info .... I'll make some observations but there were some questions you didn't answer, so will await those (ie about the important business of changing page titles). Can you add or subtract pages too? Also whether you are restricted by tight templates or whether you have the fredom to have, say, one photo a page or 30 if you want?

Comments
The site is very small. If you want to plan to grow you business and make this site a 'hub' for all you do .... there isn't much space on the server to hold files, tons of photos, videos etc. There are ways around this but you may outgrow it if that's your plan.

I don't really understand what package you have as I thought it was with GoDaddy and even their Economy package has 10 Gigs Space and 300 Gigs Transfer.

1 Gig bandwidth will be OK now but do you know what happens if this is exceded? In fact, do you know what having 1 Gig even means?
How do you access the files to upload text, pictures etc. Is it cPanel or some other interface?

>> 1 email account

This will essentially mean you get the address the same as the domain name.

>> 50 email forwards (not sure what this means)

A forward is when one email address is 'forwarded' in another email inbox of your choice. I don't know whether this means outgoing or incoming. You should ask. I suspect it means that you can use 50 different prefixes for your email address ie sales@ info@ enquiries@ help@ and so on. These are really useful and can be used for all kinds of stuff to help you save time and track results etc. More later when you know what you have.

>> free $25 microsoft adcenter credit
This is an advertising credit that you alost certainly won't use!
There's a form of advertising called PPC (Pay Per Click). Google's is called AdWords and this is Microsoft for results on MSN.

>> free $50 Facebook Ad credit

No idea why you'd want this but worth checking out later, especially if there is an expiry date.

>> free google webmaster tools

I think they are free anyway. I get them with my free GMail account.

Look forward to hearing more and helping you with the next stages.

John Gordon
The Infotainer

Hi Heather

Yes, weebly.com is good but sometimes restrictions of sites like this prevent doing things you may want in the future.

The other danger is that unless you have your own domain (which you have) if you only have a 'sub-domain, if they close, you've lost everything.

>>.... set up a FaceBook page (though I need to start pimping it out to get more fans Wink)

The Social Media sites are a fantasic way to build a fan base and then drive massive traffic to your blogs and main hub site. Facebook is great and everyone should have a personal page, fan page and event pages. It's important, though, to make daily posts of stuff that's interesting and valuable to your friends on there.

>>... google local business - so now my business comes up in that first list of business when you type in "face painting NYC" or "face painting Manhattan" into google.

I haven't seen your site as I don't know the url. So I put in the searches yyou said and still couldn't find you on the first few pages. In fact is was primarily agents and ROByn Thompson.

>> .....Not really a fan of Twitter

I have a Twitter account and Tweet daily..and it does work for me. But that depends upon what you use it for. You have to have it as part of an overall strategy. That's the only was to use MySpace, Squidoo, Digg, Furl, Stumble and all the other Networks. They all have a use ... gotta know what that is and how to leverage it though.

>> I've also submitted my site to google in hopes that they'll include it in the list the next time they do a webcrawl

When I know what your site is I can tell you whether they did crawl you or not and which pages. Thay will crawl and rank you tomorrow if there is good reason! Did you submit all your pages? Have you added new content since?

>> I'm working on SEO (search engine optimization) for the site a bit at a time.

You really need to do on page and off page SEOto have any effect. Again, I'll comment more when I've seen your site and help you where necessary.

All for now....

John Gordon
The Infotainer